said he, “but that I feared to intrude. I knew your father very well, very well indeed. I hope to know his son as well—or better. These changes come to us all, but I was shocked, deeply shocked. I assure you, Mr. Kent, I—was—shocked.”

“Sit down, won’t you?” said Joe. “Have a cigar?”

“Not in the morning, thank you,” said Ackerman. “My constitution won’t stand it now. Don’t mind me, though.”

He watched Joe strike a match. His gaze was very keen and measuring, as if the young man were a problem of some sort to be solved.

“And how do you find it going?” he asked. “Quite a change for you, to be saddled with a big business at a moment’s notice. If I recollect, you were at college till very recently. Yes? Unfortunate. Not that I would deprecate the value of education. Not at all. A most excellent thing. Fine training for the battle of life. But at the same time scarcely a practical preparation for the duties you have been called on so suddenly to assume.”

“That’s a fact,” said Joe. “Just at present I’d trade a couple of the years I spent there for one in the office. However, I’m learning slowly. Doing the best I can, you know.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” returned Ackerman cordially. “If I had a son—I am sorry I haven’t—and Providence in its inscrutable wisdom saw fit to remove me—we never can tell; as the Good Book says, Death comes like a thief in the night—that is how I would wish him to face the world. Bravely and modestly, as you are doing. No doubt you feel your responsibilities, eh?”

“Well, yes,” Joe admitted. “I have my experience to get, and the concern is pretty large. Naturally it worries me a little.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Ackerman thoughtfully, “it’s a pity your father never took action along the lines of a conversation I had with him a few months ago. I expressed surprise that he had never turned his business into a joint stock company, and—rather to my surprise I confess, for he was a little old-fashioned in such matters—he said he had been thinking of doing so. He observed, and very truly, that he was as capable of managing his own affairs as any board of directors, but that if anything happened to him, such experienced advice would be of inestimable benefit to you. And then he spoke of the limited liability feature as desirable. Looking back at that conversation,” said Mr. Ackerman with a gentle sigh, “it almost seems as if he had a premonition. I assure you that he spoke with the greatest earnestness, 

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